Bitcoin Network Requires 72–92% of Subsea Cables Cut for Major Impact, Cambridge Study Finds

Bitcoin's network is more resilient to physical infrastructure failures than expected, requiring simultaneous disruption of 72% to 92% of cross-border undersea cables to materially affect node connectivity, a Cambridge Centre for Alternative Finance study cited by CoinDesk finds. Reviewing 11 years of data and 68 confirmed submarine cable incidents, researchers report that in over 87% of real-world cases fewer than 5% of nodes were impacted, including a March 2024 event off Côte d'Ivoire where damage to seven to eight cables affected about 43% of local nodes but only 0.03% of the global network. The study notes Bitcoin is far more exposed to targeted attacks, estimating that disrupting around 20% of strategically important cable links or cutting routing capacity by just 5% at major hosting providers such as Hetzner, OVH, Comcast, Amazon and Google Cloud could generate similar network effects. Researchers add that Tor-based nodes now represent about 64% of the Bitcoin network as of 2025, heavily concentrated in well-connected countries including Germany, France and the Netherlands, reflecting the community's shift toward more censorship-resistant infrastructure in response to internet controls and geopolitical tensions.